Aside from the national electoral candidates, one name seemed to dominate this summer’s headlines: Brock Turner, the former Stanford University student convicted of three felony sexual assault charges after he raped a fellow student.
As a feminist and as a human capable of at least a modicum of emotion, I was pleased to see the level of outrage leveled at his paltry three-month jail sentence (cut down from the original six months), as well as conversations about how his race (Turner is white), class and gender afforded him preferential treatment in the criminal justice system. Yet I must admit I became concerned about the general conversation as people’s outrage progressed, both about the Brock Turner case and similar cases that have grabbed national headlines. People are neglecting to center victims in their conversations and only take a superficial look into how rape culture is so deeply embedded in both our society and the criminal justice system.
The primary backlash against the Turner case was a petition to recall Judge Aaron Persky who handed down the sentence and has been criticized for handing out lenient sentences in other sex-crime judgements. And while I signed the petition and support Persky’s removal from the bench, he is being treated as an anomaly as opposed to what he is: a representative norm of how sexual assault and rape victims are treated in the criminal justice system.
Just take a look at the Department of Justice (DOJ) report about the Baltimore Police Department, which documented a prosecutor calling a rape victim a “conniving little whore” and showed that just 17 percent of 2015 sexual assault cases ended with an arrest. In short, the report shows that the very people who are charged with the protection of victims — lawyers, police, judges — systematically neglect or actively harm victims of sex crimes, especially black female victims.
Reports from other cities and national DOJ reports such as “Identifying and Preventing Gender Bias in Law Enforcement Response to Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence” confirm that this mistreatment of sex crime victims is the norm. Funneling the focus into the recall of one judge suggests a superficial solution to a deeply embedded problem. Judge Persky is not, as he is portrayed, a rotten apple, but a logical product of our culture and criminal justice system.
The focus on Judge Persky is a result of our failure to center victims in our general discussions. The woman raped by Turner wrote a victim’s statement read aloud in court and then widely shared on social media. I was glad to see people sharing her statement but dismayed to see them not centering her words.
In her statement, the victim did not call out Judge Persky, but specifically criticized the probation board for Turner’s lenient sentence (the probation board recommended the sentence to Judge Persky). Yet rather than read and focus on her criticisms of what she experienced with the probation board, mainstream feminist and activist focused on the judge. When a victim of rape specifically calls out what they see as a major problem in their case, why don’t we listen?
There is a similar pattern with regard to how people reacted to lenient jail sentences by demanding longer ones across the board without even considering the victim’s wishes. I have no problem with people saying “I hope he rots in prison” or similar sentiments as an emotional response; I’ve certainly had similar emotional reactions. But I do have a problem with people pressing for mandatory minimums — exactly what happened in the Brock Turner case.
While the victim criticized the lenient sentence in her statement, she also stated that she did not want to see him rot away in prison. Mandatory minimum sentencing, like ludicrously lenient sentences, is an affront to victims as it completely takes away any semblance of control they had over their trials. Many victims want their assailants to serve a long prison sentence, but many don’t want their assailants to spend an extended time in prison or any time at all.
A similar case to Turner happened recently in Massachusetts in which David Becker was charged with two counts of rape and sentenced to two years of probation. Outrage ensued, yet it is important to note that one of the victims wrote in her statement that she did not want Becker to serve jail time. There is no doubt in my mind that like Turner, Becker was afforded privileges during his trial because of his race and gender. Yet that does not mean we should be so blinded by our outrage as to discard the wishes of the victim.
People are so eager to express outrage over sex crime cases that they unconsciously ignore or dismiss the victim’s wishes. By all means, be outraged and express that anger — but do not do so without remembering, or hopefully centering, the victim. Be outraged at individual judges, but then also remember how our society treats victims at large. Superficial and individual solutions cannot solve a system that is deeply rotten to the core. Do not think that the removal of a judge or a single harsh sentence will begin to make up for injustice. The only way to ensure justice is not only to listen to victims, but to center them in the conversation.
Emeline Armitage is a junior International Studies major from Cleveland.
